Know your Enemy on Domestic Terrorism. Arizona..................

Arizona Patriots (AP)

Base of Operation: United States

Founding Philosophy: The Arizona Patriots were a loosely organized group of patriots that subscribe to Posse Comitatus and Christian Identity ideology. The Patriots were white supremacist anti-Semites who sought to overthrow the American government. They began as paper terrorists, clogging the court system with bogus lawsuits. In the mid-1980s, however, the Patriots began planning more violent attacks on the government.

Current Goals: In 1984, the Arizona Patriots issued a document threatening to indict all Arizona public officials before a "patriot" grand jury unless they retired within 30 days. In 1986, the FBI ended a two-year undercover investigation of the group with the arrest of 10 members. The suspects were charged with plotting to bomb the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the LA office of the FBI, two offices of the Jewish Defense League, and a Utah IRS office. They were also planning to rob an armored car in Nevada. Their plans for the robbery were extraordinarily complex, which is typical for the paramilitary radical right. The Patriots were going to use arrows with exploding tips, homemade mortars, and sleeping gas to attack the van, and they planned to detonate a bomb at the Hoover Dam just before the robbery in order to distract police. These crimes were inspired by The Turner Diaries, the same racist novel on which both Timothy McVeigh and The Order modeled their heinous crimes. The Arizona Patriots were essentially destroyed by the imprisonment of six of its members for involvement in the 1986 conspiracy, but there is some indication that the group may be resurfacing.